Bill Lawrence has his fingerprints on roughly 35 of all sitcoms it seems. As his new show, Undateable makes its debut, the creator of Scrubs and Cougar Towntalks to Co.Create about how to write a sitcom and how to get it on TV...

TV IS AS MUCH ABOUT EXECUTION AS IDEA

I look for two things when people come to me with show ideas: 1. They’re passionate about the idea, not just trying to sell it as a piece of business, and 2. They can actually do the gig. TV is not as much about the idea as people think--it’s about the execution. When you think about Cheers, it’s just a bunch of friends in a bar, and if they couldn’t execute that, it would've been disastrous. That’s why there’s not a lot of overnight success in TV. Mostly, people need to work on and produce shows for a number of years. Some sitcoms might have a high-concept to hook you in, but then they become an ensemble piece about the characters.

I was so sad yesterday when I heard about Maya Angelou's passing. I've always enjoyed reading and watching her. From her I always learned more about humanity, dignity, courage, and character.

When I found this HBR post yesterday of an interview with her, I was delighted. The interviewer/author Alison Beard even talks with Maya about business storytelling.The interview is quintessential Angelou and I know you'll enjoy it.

There is a little-known book in my library that I treasure for its wisdom -- Facing Evil; Light at the Core of Darkness (1989) -- that Maya (and many other amazing people) contributed to. Some of my favorite passages from her essay are, "We must remember the great struggle between majestic forces -- that that struggle introduces a dynamic into our intellect and into our souls. We are required to develop courage to care...We need the courage to create ourselves daily, to be bodacious enough to create ourselves daily as Christians, as Jews, as Muslims, as thinking, caring, laughing, loving human beings. (pg 29) Now wherever that lives in us--whether it's in the bend of the elbow, behind the kneecap--wherever that lives, there dwells the nobleness in the human spirit. Not nobility. I don't trust the word. I think it's pompous. But the nobleness is in the human spirit. It is seen in the fact that we rise to good, we do rise."

Angelou's view of story was in its power to unite. The end of her poem "Human Family" says, "We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike." (from I Shall Not Be Moved)

Enjoy this article honoring one great lady, and the inspiration that lies waiting for you.

[Disclaimer: "Kathy's Insight" is usually simply another pithy excerpt from the Scooped article]: "I began my career in storybanking at Families USA, a pioneer of the technique. When I got there, the stories were housed in a database that I could only access from the computer in my office, which seemed fine at the time because the story bank was essentially a team of one, and I went in there every day!"

By: David Larocque. Transmedia or 'Transmedia Storytelling' is, straight up, anything that a person, place or thing will use to advertise themselves that's not traditional to their own format or medium.

Summary of my Master Class / Workshop on Storytelling, Transmedia and Other Trending Topics for students of the MA in Advanced Marketing at Deusto University. ("Story is EXPERIENCE shaped to SHARE" The "telling" is only one piece.

This is a nice SlideShare piece that takes a complex subject and boils it down into easy-to-understand principles that anyone can use to create better visual stories.

Check it out. It's one of the better pieces I've found on the topic and includes some information I'd not seen before. Like the Taxonomy of Visual Content which covers different content in terms of cost, interactivity, and format. Very helpful! So is the slide going over the elements of successful visual content. The post also tackles how to get started.

This story first appeared in the May 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. The west Los Angeles offices of AwesomenessTV saw a flurry of activity the morning CEO Brian Robbins announced his company had acquired fellow YouTube multichannel network Big Frame for $15 million. Moments after the reveal, employees' cheers erupted from his second-floor office.

Stories are fundamental to social connection. Our ability to 'mentalize' and imagine allows people to bridge social and cultural gaps because stories focus on our fundamental humanity. Recently listened to Billie Goldman from Intel talk at #SoMe Awards Forum on Intel's innovative "Inside Films" series. They exemplify Bernardo's message on the importance of shared experience. It may be brand extension and awareness, but psychologically, it is about empathy and connection--the most valuable (and hard to measure) forms of social capital.

The Future is Now: 5 Things pushing the art and form of storytelling on Digital Cinema - Transmedia curated by Digital Cinema in Transition (Digital Cinema - Transmedia - The Future is Now: 5 Things pushing the art and form of storytelling

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